An Analysis on What’s Been Going on in Occultic;Nine so Far

Do not read past this point unless you have either watched up to episode 6 of Occultic;Nine or if you are simply curious about what happens. I am only explaining what I think is happening in the series.

Occultic;Nine is an anime that started running this season and has been met with mixed reviews. It is based around Yuta Gamon who runs an affiliate blog called Kiri Kiri Basara which is based entirely on the occult. The only reason why he chose such a topic for his blog was to ride the hype that had been surrounding the occult lately, at least in the world of the show. Gamon ends up attracting a bunch of strange people such as Ryoka Narusawa who was the first to join his group, acts stupid most of the time, and carries a ray gun. There is also Sarai Hashigami who is a first year University student and who doesn’t believe anything his Father believed in about occult things, Miyu Aikawa who is a popular fortune teller and in her first year of high school, Toko Sumikaze who is a reporter for an occult magazine, Ria Minase who is a specialist of black magic and curses people for a small fee, and Shun Moritsuka who is a detective investigating the murder that happened quite early in the show.

Occultic;Nine begins with Gamon explaining what an affiliate blog is and why he made one. Everything after this appears convoluted and one of the main issues people have of this series is that the plot is a mess. We have characters being introduced that have no clear purpose to the story. All the characters I have listed above are introduced by the beginning of the second episode. New major events happen in the world before the previous events have been explained. The murder of Professor Hashigami is still as confusing as ever and now we have the added mystery of the mass suicide though at least this second event has been explained in the most recent episode. To make matters worse the characters talk very fast most of the time. This forces watchers of the show who don’t know Japanese to stare down at the bottom of the screen to catch each subtitle as it rushes by. This isn’t a bad thing and is usually seen in mystery movies and TV shows. It also isn’t an easy way to present an info dump because everything the characters say in these fast conversations is based around the characters brainstorming what is going on.

This series is meant to be confusing. Whenever a question is answered there are many more that are revealed. This confusion is added onto by the camera angles. Sometimes the shots are upside down or sideways, other times they are spinning around or jumping quickly from character to character. It’s a mystery based around the paranormal and it is also written by the same person who wrote Steins;Gate (I guess that explains the semicolon in the title).

The murder of Professor Hashigami happens in the first episode. He leaves behind a message written in his own blood, C.O.D.E. Also the body was stabbed several times and his molar was removed from his body. This is similar to something that happened in a Doujin manga written by Ririka Nishizono which Shun immediately notices and presents to his higher ups. They think he is just being childish since he is a very young detective and they refuse to help him in his investigation. This begins Shun’s investigation of the murder based on the manga.

Gamon invites Miyu to join his group based around his blog so that she can help him get more traffic. After this he goes to Professor Hashigami’s office in order to interview him. Gamon walks in and is shocked to find the Professor murdered on the floor. Before he saw the body however he picked up the bloody knife which was a very stupid thing to do. He was then instructed by a mysterious entity to pull the Professor’s molar which is also a key and run so that he could be safe. He spends the entirety of the second episode running around the city trying to find the keyhole that the molar key fit in. He also jumps at every shadow because he is scared that the police are hunting him down.

Meanwhile Sarai is investigating the mystery of his Father’s murder. Before it happened he called Miyu on her internet show in order to mock her and disprove her fortune telling abilities. She tells him to go see his Father immediately. He figures out that Gamon was at the scene of the murder and that he is not at fault. Sarai requests the help of Gamon to figure out the meaning of C.O.D.E. and Gamon figures out that there is a message written using a code in the ceiling tiles of the Professor’s office in his house (not the one in the University). Sarai decodes this message and discovers that it is a list of names related to the mass suicide that happens at the beginning of the fourth episode.

Shun goes to the cafe where Gamon meets with the members of his group and talks about molars with Gamon when everyone else is gone doing things. It is obvious that Shun expects that Gamon has something to do with the murder. Gamon is freaking out by the time Shun leaves because he doesn’t want to be found out. Also Gamon tells everyone about his magic talking box and no one believes him.

Ria is running her cursing business with a spirit she calls a devil. She is sent an entire scalp and a lot of money so that she can curse someone. She does this. Also Miyu and Ryoka come to investigate her and pretend to curse Gamon. A story is told about how she stole her brother’s body and lived with it for about a year. The police only came to investigate when the neighbours complained of a bad smell coming from the house. In real life this is less uncommon than you would think though normally it happens because someone dies in the house, not because the person dies elsewhere and had their body stolen. I expect that the devil is Ria’s brother because why else would there be a fully animated flashback and why else would Shun mention her brother when he spoke to her.

In the last episode Sarai, Gamon, Ryoka, and Miyu search for a cursed box. They think it is at a shrine, then at a shinto temple. Ria arrives at the cafe and after proving to Sarai that she is the real deal she tells the group that the box is at a specific temple with a white boy. They get to the temple and find an albino boy trying to force a bloody box closed. Everyone but Miyu chases him. She instead opens the bloody box and finds a charm that she knows belongs to her friend.

At the end of that last episode a bombshell was literally dropped at the end. A list of identified victims was read off on the news while Gamon was hard at work deciphering the list of names. He deciphers his name just as it is read off on the news. This makes him laugh but the person in the box (the radio entity) tells him that he finally figured it out. Meanwhile both Shun and Toko go to their respective places of work to find their bosses mourning their loss. It was also revealed what the cause of the mass suicide was. A mysterious organization is apparently trying to create eternal life and the victims of the mass suicide were just failed test subjects.

Now I have few questions. How many of the characters in this show have been dead since episode 3? So far we have evidence that Gamon, Toko, and Shun are all victims but are any other members of the cast also victims? If these characters have been dead since episode 3 how are have some of the events happened? Could it have something to do with Ryoka being a spirit guide like Wikipedia says she is? What purpose does Ryoka even serve in the narrative because so far she has just been there to add fan service, humour, and cuteness that the show otherwise doesn’t have. Why was Professor Hashigami murdered? Who is the mysterious organization? What is the purpose of the cursed box that suddenly showed up in the show without any warning except for the appearance of the albino boy in an earlier episode?

Now there are a total of three mysteries that need to be solved. They are the murder, the mass suicide, and the cursed box. I wonder what will happen in the series next. Also Occultic;Nine is based off of a light novel series so you want to you could read ahead and maybe understand the story better since it won’t be as fast paced and you can read it however fast you want to. I would recommend you watch this series even though the first episode looks convoluted because it really is a great show. It may even be one of my favourite series from this season.

Follow Blog via Email

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 395 other followers

Hello!
I am known as EclaDragon throughout most of the internet. o those who known me away from the internet I am Kirsten. I am many things. An amateur writer, an archaeology/ environmental science student, a blogger who is still trying to learn how to run a blog.
I have a total of 4 aspirations. I will not share them here on the sidebar. I may share them eventually on my About Me page. Each aspiration is linked directly to a different aspect of my life and I hope that by writing on this blog I can successfully bring these aspects and aspirations together so that I only have one.
I hope you enjoy reading my thoughts and my work.
Sincerely,
EclaDragon